


Yellow Diamonds

by Mazarin221b



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Adultery, Angst, Episode: s03e02 The Sign of Three, John being worse than he should be, M/M, One Night Stands, Sherlock being better than he is, Spoilers, Stag Night interstitial
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-10
Updated: 2014-01-10
Packaged: 2018-01-08 06:33:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,366
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1129442
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mazarin221b/pseuds/Mazarin221b
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's an eternity between the time they find themselves on the stairs and the rest of the night. </p><p>  <i>Of all the selfish things that Sherlock has done, this one is so outrageous and so courageous John is at a loss as to what to say. He knows he wants it, knows whatever it is Sherlock is offering will only happen once. So he slides across the ocean of cool blue sheet and pins Sherlock down with a kiss, leaning on his elbows with his hands wrapped around Sherlock’s shoulders.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Yellow Diamonds

**Author's Note:**

> Special thanks to Mydwynter for the beta. Without him I'd never have worked through the emotional mindset in this.

“John, I can’t get up the stairs.”

John blinks a bit at that, a deep baritone too close to his ear and a bit more slurred than he’d ever heard it before. John thought Sherlock was monitoring their alcohol intake, or something. Keep them from getting this pissed, right? But Sherlock is leaning against the banister and about to topple over onto the hall floor, so perhaps – oh, wait. Shots. He bought shots behind Sherlock’s back and now he’s paying for it. John blinks his eyes open again and is fairly sure the ceiling is pulsing with the beat of his heart.

They should go to bed. Two hours, Mrs. Hudson said, and he’s already sunk.

“Let’s go,” John says, and tries to stand. The world tilts sideways for a moment and he grabs at the banister, knocking into Sherlock and pushing him off of the stairs onto the floor.

“Mmmph,” Sherlock says, and lies there like a slug, face to the carpet. His body is graceful even folded up in a drunken stupor. Git.

“Hey, fuck you. This is…this is somehow your fault. You and your bloody app thing. Phone. Whatever. Get your arse upstairs so I can kick it.” Sherlock looks hilarious, if John were honest with himself. He’s fairly sure he’s not ever seen Sherlock quite so drunk, so completely beyond his own control. But he needs some water, they both do, so John hauls him up by the armpits and slowly drags him up the stairs, Sherlock piteously digging his heels into the steps and pushing himself along.

“Bloody bastard. You’re not as tall as you think you are, but Christ you’re heavy.” John pauses on the landing and lets Sherlock slump to the floor. “You could fucking help more than that. I ought to just leave you there.”

“Bed,” Sherlock says, and starts to crawl toward the stairs. “Sleeping. Did you know Molly has an undergraduate chemistry degree?”

John is thrown by this conversational left turn, but helps pull Sherlock the rest of the way up the stairs. Sherlock comes around a little bit and shrugs his coat off before slouching through the sitting room toward the kitchen. John follows behind and pulls two glasses from the rack and fills them both up to the top before handing Sherlock one. Funny, Sherlock still keeps the glasses almost exclusively on the drainboard, though it was only because John had insisted they couldn’t be in the same cabinet as the chemicals. Habits die hard, he supposes.

Sherlock stares into his glass for a moment.  “This is not at all how I anticipated the evening to go.”

“No? Please tell me there weren’t strippers. I don’t think I would have survived with you in the same room. I’d have died of embarrassment or something.”

Sherlock eyes him over the rim of his glass.  “Pfffffffft,” he says, after draining it and putting it on the table. “Seen you aroused plenty of times.”

John blinks and stares hard at Sherlock. “No you haven’t.” No, he hasn’t. He thinks not. Fairly sure.

Sherlock smiles, a molasses slow, salacious, _knowing_ smile.  John ignores the heat that blooms through him. Stupid bastard with his stupid hair. Not John’s fault he knows how it feels through his fingers, the silky weight of it in his hand as he runs his fingers through and around and holds it out of the way to tend one of Sherlock’s many case-related wounds. He’s sure, almost positive, he might be the only one who does. The thought makes him slightly hysterical as the harder edge of his drunkenness is slipping away, leaving him feeling a bit clearer, less fuzzy around the edges.

“My room,” John says, and he winces as his voice falters. Sherlock’s eyebrows rise and John rolls his eyes. “I’m just going to sleep in my old room, Sherlock.”

“Can’t,” Sherlock slurs.

“What?”

“Can’t. No blankets. No sheets. Mrs. Hudson took it all away. Now that you’re gone.” Sherlock frowns. “You are gone, aren’t you? Not here any more.”

John puts a hand on Sherlock’s shoulder. “Not gone. I’ve been here all day. I will still be here. But now I need a sleep, maybe on the sofa.”

Sherlock shakes his head. “My bed. Come on, John.” At John’s pause Sherlock rolls his eyes. “Oh don’t be so pedestrian. You’re not pedestrian, John.”

John shrugs and follows Sherlock into his room, takes off his shoes as Sherlock slides off his shirt and they both move toward the right side of the bed at the same time.

“Sorry,” John says. “I’m just used to …you know. With Mary.”

Sherlock stills, stands completely, worryingly quiet in just his trousers. The lamplight behind him limns the edges of his arms, his shoulders, but leaves his face in shadow. John blinks, trying to become more accustomed to the dark because he very much wants to see whatever expression is on Sherlock’s face right at this moment, because the hilarity of the night has died on the threshold of Sherlock’s room.

“I don’t mind,” Sherlock says after a long moment, voice dark with alcohol, and he climbs into his bed and moves over to the far side. He slides down deep beneath the blankets until his eyes are barely peeking out, and has positioned himself as far on the other side of the bed as he can without risking falling out.

John gets in after him and rolls onto his side to look at Sherlock’s profile in the quiet of the night. It’s taken almost six months of near-constant nagging but Sherlock looks well and healthy. Beautiful, really, and John has always envied the easy grace with which he holds himself and the imperious tilt of his head.  It feels a bit strange, Sherlock’s long, lanky body and the cool gulf of sheet between them, after the soft, sweet heat of Mary’s body close to his.

“Have you ever shared a bed with anyone?” he asks, and the words are out of his mouth before his brain even finishes the thought.

Sherlock turns to face John and studies him intently. “Of course I have. Not generally for the purposes you suppose, but I have shared a bed multiple times with various individuals.”

“I bet you hated it.”

“Not always,” Sherlock says carefully, and the strange, buzzy feeling in John’s stomach flares.

John clears his throat. “Is this one of those times?” he asks, and the room feels oppressively quiet.

“No. I invited you here, after all.” Sherlock’s glance flickers down to John’s mouth and back up, and his gaze … the only way John can wrap his head around it is to call it _sad._ It’s a bit startling, really.

“Hey, you know what I said, earlier? I’ll still be here—we’ll still be around. With you. Mary and I.”

Sherlock’s smile is tight. “Mrs. Hudson keeps saying that marriage changes people.”

“She does, yes,” John says, and takes a deep breath to help clear his head.  “But not here, not us. I mean, some things will, as we don’t live in each other’s pockets any more.”

Sherlock huffs a laugh and his fingers fiddle with the edge of the sheet. “Despite your preoccupation with constant tidiness, the quiet grows oppressive some days.”

“Sherlock Holmes, are you saying you miss me?” John teases, and waits with gleeful anticipation of Sherlock’s witty reply to take the edge off of the night, the situation, and the intimate warmth of the dark recesses of Sherlock’s bed. So John is utterly speechless when Sherlock answers.

“Yes.”

The word echoes in the room and in John’s chest, beating a hollow refrain. Of course Sherlock will miss him, and obviously fears for the future. John is startled as the realisation crashes through him. Sherlock’s constant preoccupation with wedding plans, his need to be involved in every little detail, the odd comradeship he’d developed with Mary and his strange, sentimental gesture toward revisiting past cases tonight is finally coalescing in John’s head as a single, fixed-point signal, all leading toward an unequivocal truth: Sherlock is scared out of his wits to lose him, and that sort of fear usually only manifests from one sort of place.

Love.

He is much too sober now for a comfortable conversation, too much so to claim not to remember in the morning, or to feign sleep or confusion. When Sherlock hesitatingly reaches out to touch his fingertips to John’s cheek John sucks in a breath with the shocking fire of it.

“You’re such a bastard, Sherlock,” John says. “Seriously. I’m…I’m gonna be married in a week—a _week_ — and I found her while you were gone and I never would have had you not left and I’d buried this, _buried it_ , don’t you see? Fuck, Sherlock.” Of all the selfish things that Sherlock has done, this one is so outrageous and so courageous John is at a loss as to what to say. He knows he wants it, knows whatever it is Sherlock is offering will only happen once. So he slides across the ocean of cool blue sheet and pins Sherlock down with a kiss, leaning on his elbows with his hands wrapped around Sherlock’s shoulders.

“This is not the way to keep me,” John whispers fiercely against Sherlock’s lips. “Constant attention and buttering up my fiancée and ridiculous cases and…and _this.”_  John groans a little as Sherlock ducks his head and licks at a sensitive spot on John’s neck. “This is not on, don’t you see?”

Sherlock shifts a little under John’s body, creating a wave of contact from chest to knees that makes John’s spine melt. “I want you to remember me with affection,” Sherlock says quietly.  “To think of me, and this, and tonight and _know_ , and be happy.”

John shakes his head even as he skims his hands up Sherlock’s chest. How could he be? “No, I’ll feel guilty and like a liar, and where will you be? Pining in a corner?”

Sherlock stops kissing John’s neck and pulls back to give him an offended look. “I don’t pine, John,” he says, and he’s so obviously offended John can’t help but laugh—at Sherlock, at the situation, at the simple fact that he might be both the luckiest and unluckiest person on the face of the Earth.

“Of course not,” John says, and he takes off his own shirt and watches with avid eyes as Sherlock drags down his trousers and pants and pulls them out from under the blankets like a magic show. They’re still under cover, mostly, and John can’t see at thing, but once he kicks off his own trousers the heat of Sherlock’s body draws him in, their first touch searing a brand onto John’s body he’ll never forget. “This is not,” he starts, and the friction of his bare cock against Sherlock’s makes him gasp. “This isn’t…”

“Of course not,” Sherlock parrots back at him. John knows what it isn’t but not sure what it _is_ , honestly, but it feels like the need of years, pent up like a dam behind a wall of grief and releasing in one overwhelming, crushing wave.

John straddles Sherlock’s thighs and buries his face in his neck, and the weight of Sherlock’s arms around him feels like an anchor. The rhythm they’re building as they rock together is slow and languorous, dopey with the remnants of alcohol, until the first tendrils of orgasm begin to wind their way around his spine and speed his movements into a haphazard slip of skin against skin. Sherlock throws his head back against the pillow, eyes closed, mouth parted on a gasp. This close, all John can see  is his face, the shell of his ear and curls tickling his nose. The rest is pure sensation, the heat of Sherlock’s cock against his, leg hair tickling along his thighs, and the steady beat of Sherlock’s pulse in his throat. Sherlock is thrusting against him so hard now he almost lifts John from the bed, and once John works a hand between them to squeeze them both Sherlock is done for, coming hard with an arch and a deep, full-throated moan John will hear in his dreams forever.  John watches pleasure break across Sherlock’s face and he’s there, too, spilling over Sherlock’s stomach and cock and his own hand.

John is wrecked, the self-denial of years with and without this man, the promise to himself and to Mary, dissolved in an instant. Guilt creeps up on him even as he brushes damp curls from Sherlock’s forehead, but he doesn’t feel regret. He took this last chance to acknowledge what could have been, and the memory that Sherlock says he wanted for him. The knowledge that no matter the circumstances, no matter the distance, no matter how long they have been apart, there is one other in the world who knows him and loves him, and that, John thinks, is likely the best gift he could receive.

Sherlock smiles at him, bright but still a bit hazy, and lifts up to kiss John tenderly on the mouth. John accepts the kiss for what it is, what it must be; a never-to-be-repeated goodbye to this part of their life, a path seen but never taken.

John pulls back to clean up, and then reaches over the side of the bed to start putting on clothes. He is very much awake now, adrenaline coursing through his body and despite the guilt he feels exultant, alive, loved. When he finishes dressing he turns back to see Sherlock is sitting up, arms around his knees and staring at the foot of his bed. The guilt that had started to ebb intensifies, changes shape, and he wonders what he’s just done.

“Are you all right?” he asks quietly.

Sherlock turns to him and visibly shakes off the melancholy that was coloring his posture. “Of course I am. I just need to, er…” Sherlock stops and flicks his eyes down to his chest, still sticky and white. “...clean up and get dressed. After all, you are getting married and it is your stag night. We should go have another drink to celebrate.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> The title is from Rhianna's "We Found Love," which is playing during the last pub scene before they go home. It's a great club song, but the lyrics are...well. Here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tg00YEETFzg


End file.
